Well I guess it has been a while. We stopped here first in January 2003 for two nights on our way west. Then in March 2004 we stopped overnight on our way east. Since then we have stayed in Las Cruces NM about an hour and a half east to visit with Leora and Stuart and their family. As we planned our route last week we realized that Leora would be off with Amalia who is auditioning for music schools. We decided to bypass Las Cruces and City of Rocks seemed like a logical place to head for, at least for a day or two.
On the way from Big Bend we thought we would head for Davis Mountain State Park, but it was 26 miles out of the way (52 miles round trip) for no really good reason. When we got to Marfa, we stopped and thought about what really made sense. It was only 3 PM Central and we were heading west into Mountain time where it was 2 PM. We decided to keep rolling and drove 75 miles west to Van Horn TX. This place makes Fort Stockton look like a thriving metropolis, but there was a KOA with all the facilities we needed. We pulled in and ran laundry and cleaned up everything. This was the first time we had electricity, water and a sewer connection in a week. In the morning we took on some fresh water and ran one more load of laundry before setting out on I 10. we thought we would head for Deming NM, but decided, as we fueled in Anthony TX, that City of Rocks might be fun.
Pulling out of the Flying J, almost immediately we pulled into the New Mexico Welcome Center where we picked up some tourist information. As I browsed, while Carol drove, I noted that Silver City just 40 miles from City of Rocks, was having a Chocolate Fantasia Day on Saturday. Since we planned on visiting Silver City in any event this meant that most of the shops and Galleries would be open. We pulled into City of Rocks and found no available electric connection so we wandered around the circuit to find a likely spot to dry camp.
City of Rocks is the result of a volcano hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is a magma extrusion in the middle of a plain, With the passage of time the extrusion has shrunk and split and the top cover has eroded (don’t take my geology as accurate, but it gives the idea). What remains is a bunch of rock towers with lanes like streets between them sticking up in the middle of the plain. Our site is tucked into the rocks. The temperatures in Big Bend are still in the 80’s day time. Ttoday we woke to wind and 42 degrees. That is as warm as we saw all day. We spent the morning in the coach and left for Silver City at 11:30 or so. We drove through strong winds and what, at first, I interpreted as a dust storm until it started leaving wet on the windshield. It came nowhere near the east coast storm but it was a bit shocking to see snow starting to accumulate on the rocks and shoulders of the road. We found our way into the center of Historic Silver City where most of the galleries and shops are. After parking we stopped at the first gallery we came to and learned that the Chocolate was all by tickets, of course, and the tickets had all sold out several days before our arrival. This saved us from sampling up to 20 chocolates in the course of the day. Many people had bags with them to accumulate the chocolates for consumption at a later time. We were guided to lunch at Diane’s which was wonderful with local product and a varied veggie menu and of course wonderful green chile. We wandered through many galleries and then did some food shopping on our way back to the coach.
At 8:30, as I write, we are not sure we will stay here another day. We will look at our fresh water and holding tanks in the morning after showering before we decide to cross that bridge, also the weather may have some say.